Kathleen Cullen will lead individuals through selected gallery exhibitions throughout Chelsea, attempting to see through the works of art and to use the art and the life of art to indirectly comment on life and society. The visual arts are a continuing education of the pleasurable and often problematic sort. Contemporary art especially is a way to gain a higher degree of sophistication, especially in the approach to the many issues of life. The highest value of art outside the market is that it keeps the mind your own, by helping you sharpen your opinions and teaches you through its language about where the culture is, what is on the culture’s mind, and where we are going. Art is one of the purest forms of free speech protected through the first amendment and contemporary art is one area of contemporary life where that protection is most valued and acted upon...although this isn’t the most outspoken time in American culture. In New York especially, so much energy has been consumed in the general movement of the gallery scene over to Chelsea, that the art can be viewed without the other distractions of shopping, home furnishings, etc. that have happened to Soho. Therefore, the individual’s experience with contemporary art can remain pure and untouched, and instead be built upon and contributed to by the surrounding contemporary works and galleries.

ART ON MARKET STREET KIOSK POSTER SERIES

The San Francisco Arts Commission’s Art on Market Street Poster Series program has commissioned new artwork by Bay Area artists on an annual basis since 1992. For its twentieth anniversary the 2012 series has a theme of ‘Celebrating the arts in San Francisco’ and has selected local artist Christina Empedocles to do a series of 6 drawings focusing on films shot in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Using a photorealistic trompe l’oeil style, each drawing will be center on a classic movie poster surrounded by images from the film. They will be shown with aged and weathered details, demonstrating the long and vivid life they had in our culture as well as the imperfect account we hold in our memories.

These drawing will be reproduced as six sets of posters, 68 inches high by 47 ¼ inches wide, for installation in 36 bus kiosks in the heart of the city on Market Street between 8th Street and the Embarcadero. They will be on display from November 5, 2012 to February 1, 2013.

Over the past thirty years, tattooing has transformed from an ostensibly deviant practice to a popular cultural phenomenon. Once a defiant symbol of life at society’s margins, the tattoo is now seen by some as a sign of contemporary society’s head-on embrace of celebrity, commerciality, and homogeneity. Within the LGBT community, tattooing in the second and third quarters of the 20th centuries was mostly limited to leather men and so-called “radical lesbians”, whereas it is now it is almost commonplace, with 31% of LBGT people stating they have at least one tattoo.

The changing meanings and perception of tattoos have also become the subjects for an ever growing number of visual artists. When the imagery of the tattoo is isolated from the human canvas, or when the “tattooed” becomes the subject of art, the ink can become a distinct portrait of the subject, revealing identities, histories, ethnicities, personality quirks, fetishes, addictions, conquests, allegiances. This expansive show presents the tattoo and the tattooed within the realm of fine art, providing a vivid and expansive portrait of the culture of the tattoo.